Expand Your Business with Video Marketing & Localization

Video is king when it comes to online marketing. It’s estimated that 72% of customers prefer video content over text content and that videos improve organic traffic by 300%. These are just some of the statistics that show why videos are the best way to improve brand awareness and sales. To expand that awareness to a global market, add video localization to your production process.

In this blog we will go over the benefits of video marketing and how video localization is essential in reaching international target audiences.

[Average read time: 4 minutes]

Benefits of Video Marketing for Business

Businesses know that video is a growing trend and incorporate it into their marketing strategy: business use of video jumped from 63% in 2017 to 87% in 2019. Why the sudden increase? Technology and businesses are catching on to some of the benefits of video marketing: 

• YouTube is the 2nd most popular online destination next to Google: No longer just a place to watch funny cat and dog videos, YouTube has also become a professional platform for businesses to expand and reach more customers. YouTube videos help drive traffic and are also an excellent opportunity to showcase your company’s product and services such as the one below from our YouTube channel:

• Build brand reputation: Videos present and shape the perception of your brand. Customers will be able to connect stronger to your business through the associations they make based on the visuals and audio in your video. Apple, with it’s sleek, professional commercials, showcases its devices as visually stunning, luxury items available for the regular consumer. Old Spice commercials are known for their tongue-in-cheek humor and present their products as aphrodisiacs for attracting beautiful women. When developing your videos, be sure to plan how you would like to present your brand and build your company’s reputation: Is your brand fun? Sexy? A luxury brand? On the cutting edge of technology? These kinds of questions can help develop your brand image and focus your video marketing strategy.
• Boost customer interaction & SEO (search engine optimization): If you want more customer interaction on your business’s social media and website, videos are the way to go. Videos get 21.2% more interactions compared to images only. Customers are more likely to like, share, or leave a comment on a video than other mediums. With more interaction with your online content, the better your website’s SEO. When doing a search on Google or any major search engine, it will list results based on relevancy, page ranking, quantity/quality of links, and other factors. If customers are linking to your video and sharing it across multiple social media sites, that means your video and business website will be more likely to pop up in relevant search results. The better your SEO, the higher up on the list you will appear, leading to more organic traffic and sales.

Share Your Video Globally: Video Localization

Many international brands make more revenue internationally than they do domestically. To reach customers abroad, companies localize their videos for a foreign audience. How do you localize your business videos for a foreign market? Here are some key tips:

Subtitling your existing marketing videos into another language is a cost effective way to spread your brand awareness in a different country if you don’t have the resources or option to use voice-over. Foreign subtitles create more metadata and keywords, making your video easier to find when someone searches in that particular language. You may also consider using subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing (SDH), which are subtitles for dialogue as well as other audio elements like music and audio cues. SDH are a great way to make your content more accessible and reach those with hearing special needs. To prep your video for subtitling, have the source language script on hand or have the video transcribed. 

Dubbing & Voice-Over: Moving from subtitles to voice is another way to make your videos accessible to a foreign audience. Many audiences prefer dubbing instead of subtitles so that they’re able to focus on the visuals on screen.  However, there are key things to consider when dubbing your videos: videos with less on-screen actors speaking are much easier to dub. For example, consider a cellphone ad that shows actors using the phone, but we don’t hear them. Instead there is an off-screen narrator describing how great the phone is. This is a typical, fairly straightforward video to do voice-over for, we would just replace the off-screen narration. However, if the actors are speaking on-screen and we hear them, the dubbing will have to be timed and/or lip synced to the speakers, adding more time and effort to the process.

Transcreation: Reach Your Target Audience

You may want to take the localization of your videos one step beyond subtitling and voice-over, and transcreate. Transcreating a video means tailoring your video content for a particular market and re-shooting it. That means adapting the script, the on-screen titles and visuals, and possibly re-casting your video to better fit the audience you’re trying to reach. There might be a specific consumer trend or cultural reference that your company can capitalize on.  Nestle, the makers of Kit Kat, know when exams approach it’s time to adapt their marketing in Japan to reach Japanese students who stock up on Kit Kats for good luck. With transcreation, make sure you’re working with a professional team, like JBI Studios, that understands the cultural nuances of your target region.

Videos are the best way to share your brand, and localizing your videos is the best way to expand that brand awareness globally. Successful video localization, be it subtitling, dubbing/voice-over, or transcreation, shows that your brand has taken the time to understand the target audience, giving a strong positive impression.

Make sure you don’t miss anything when you localize your video. Click below for our free Voice-Over and Video Localization Checklist.

Download JBI Studios’ New Voice-Over & Video Localization Quote Checklist.